Dyno Thrash!

Gather any group of hot rods together in one place and the conversation invariably rolls around to horsepower, as in who has how much. During the 2003 HOT ROD Magazine Power Tour, Eric Sokolowski hauled the Werx Motorsports/ Castrol Syntec mobile chassis dyno to each stop and gave participants a chance to strut their stuff, so we nabbed 10 of them (nine here plus the Hemi Road Runner featured in this issue) and put them on the polygraph to see what kind of rear-wheel power you can expect from these and similar parts combos. Bear in mind that each car was tested twice, so the dyno charts show two sets of horsepower and torque data. We also included the cars' dragstrip times as reported by the owners.

Though Werx Motorsports (704/895-1318) is headquartered in Cornelius, North Carolina, and has an in-house dyno that's available by appointment, the traveling Castrol Syntec dyno is constantly on the road, from coast to coast. Check www.werxmotorsports.com for appearance dates and locations. Also, the traveling dyno is part of the Castrol Syntec Dyno Challenge, where you can win $1,000 and a year's supply of Castrol by putting down the highest power number on the Syntec Dyno. There are seven classes for engines of all types--see details at www.castrolusa.com.

Survivor of the Cratest

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Seventeen-year-old Adam Monteleone is a smart cookie. When his dad gave him this numbers-matching, original-paint, 45,000-mile '66 427 Corvette roadster, he stashed the original Rat for safe keeping and installed one of GM Performance Parts' mighty ZZ502/502 crate beasts. Strapped to the chassis dyno, the crate-stock 502 delivers 400 hp to the IRS and propels the plastic fantastic down the quarter in 12.78 seconds at an impressive 112 mph on slippery radial street tires.

Mark Castillon's nasty street-driven hatchback demonstrates just how easy it is to make a naturally aspirated Fox-body haul. All it takes is a little bit of dieting, some extra cubes, and a dash of modern EFI to make the street-and-strip program. But Mark is quick to credit his fiancee, Amy Aucoin, for putting up with it all.

As if Randy Goss' '02 Z06 Corvette wasn't hot enough in stock trim, he had Lou Gigliotti and the staff at LG Motorsports give it the G7SR treatment. If you didn't know, Lou Gigliotti won the Speedvision World Challenge three times, has wins on both the Trans-Am and Grand-Am circuits, and G7SR stands for Gigliotti 7.0 Liter Solid Roller. The added displacement comes from a re-sleeved LS6 block and yields a whopping 466 hp at the rear skins.

It's not a Galaxie, it's a Custom. Got that? Now that everybody's up to speed on the correct nomenclature describing Phil Baxter's fullsize '67 Ford, we've gotta say this one gets us right there. Sure, a Shelby GT500 or a Fairlane GTA is a great car, but sometimes you need a break from the showbiz, a chance to appreciate musclecar engineering without the gingerbread--and this former Memphis fire chief's car does the trick. Packing a mighty 428 FE mill, Phil has transformed his utilitarian Q-code Police Interceptor into a highway brawler and Power Tour 2003 Long Hauler that's also capable of sprinting the quarter in 13.33 seconds at 104.41 mph. Book 'em Dano, er, Phil.

Kevin Harmon is a dentist who gets away from the daily drill in his '72 Olds 442. A pair of aluminum Edelbrock Performer cylinder heads and other select goodies help the big 455 make 304.9 hp and 372.9 lb-ft at the tires, or about 400 hp at the flywheel. Though the output may seem modest, the Olds 455 is all about torque, and there's plenty enough to push the 3.23:1-geared, two-ton 442-much through the quarter in 13.18 seconds at 104 mph, proving once again that peak horsepower numbers aren't everything.

When we saw the Edelbrock Performer RPM Pro-Flo EFI-equipped 383 in Jon Branigan's tasteful '66 Nova, we were curious to see how this fairly new EFI system does in the power-production department. Unlike many aftermarket EFI systems, the Pro-Flo doesn't require an expensive laptop computer. Instead, a simple keyboard with an LED screen does the job. With a little extra help from a NOS Cheater plate system, this 3,420-pound Deuce rips off mid-9s at nearly a buck-forty!

Beltdriven centrifugal superchargers for carbureted applications have been growing more popular every year since their recent reintroduction onto the hot-rodding scene. A far cry from the early Paxton and McCulloch units installed on certain OE Studebaker and Ford applications 40-plus years ago, modern centrifs still blow through the carburetor but benefit from superior engineering, and they can yield impressive gains with no penalty in driveability or reliability. Gene Heatly's '69 Camaro packs a mild 355, but thanks to supernatural aspiration courtesy of ProCharger, the rear wheels see 367 hp. That's like 475 at the flywheel or 1.36 hp per cubic inch.

Though modern beltdriven centrifugal superchargers have been very successfully teamed with carbureted applications recently, they really come to life when fuel and ignition management are controlled by a computer. Electronics allow tuners to pack the engine with much higher boost levels than carburetors without fear of detonation or a deadly lean-out. Best of all, fuel metering can be tailored to provide happy street manners. Perhaps the wildest car on Power Tour 2003, Mike Roy's ATI Procharger-urged '71 Monte Carlo blew minds on the Castrol Syntec chassis dyno when it registered an awesome 708 hp and 902 lb-ft of torque. But that's nothing compared to the fact this screamer was driven the entire 1,500-mile distance, gulping nothing other than 92-octane super-unleaded pump gas.

Want to attract a crowd every time you drive? Then get a Roots-type supercharger and jam it through your hood. That's what Steve Barber did with his 25th Anniversary '78 Vette, and the result is 443 hp and 476 lb-ft that ripple slicks and give you tunnel vision. The power-on-demand huffer is docile enough to forgive Steve's 25-mile daily commute from home to his office at Atwood Chevrolet in Vicksburg, Mississippi, where he's the sales manager.

Quick Inspection

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Steve Barber Vicksburg, MS '78 Chevy Corvette

Chassis Dyno Power

Horsepower: 443.7 at 6,800 rpm with 8 pounds of boost Torque: 476.8 at 3,600 rpm with 8 pounds of boost Dragstrip Performance: 10.20 at 131 mph in the quarter-mile